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Galveston After Ike: Moving Together Towards A Full Recovery

The Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race & Ethnicity at The Ohio State University is an applied research institute working nationally and internationally to identify solutions which expand opportunity for our most marginalized communities, in order to support a healthy, economically vibrant and just society. Affordable, sustainable and supportive housing is an important gateway to opportunity and for this reason the Institute has worked on issues related to housing development, affordability, fair housing and community development since its inception.

These efforts in dozens of communities over the past seven years have culminated in the “community of opportunity” model of housing and community development. Our model, which has been utilized in communities throughout the US, seeks to understand pathways and barriers to opportunities in each community, and to utilize a robust portfolio of policy tools to expand housing choice in high opportunity communities, to revitalize and bring opportunity to distressed areas, and to empower communities through transformative civic engagement.

After receiving numerous requests to apply some of our analytical tools to the affordable housing redevelopment issues in the aftermath of the hurricane for the Galveston area, the Institute responded with this report as part of our public service commitment to communities hard hit by natural disasters in the Gulf, as we have done in New Orleans, Alabama and Mississippi. Our mapping analysis of opportunity in the Galveston area does not represent the interests of any particular group involved in housing redevelopment in the region. We hope our work provides a framework to build consensus and identify solutions to producing an equitable, healthy and economically vibrant Gulf Coast community.

Three years after the destruction of Hurricane Ike, the supply of affordable housing in Galveston remains one of the many challenges to full recovery in the region. The following was developed to help aid in community dialogue and planning efforts directed at addressing this challenge.